Why buy­ing property here is a no-brainer

THE SOUTHERN sub­urbs stretch known as the “aca­demic belt” be­cause of its prox­im­ity to the Univer­sity of Cape Town (UCT) con­tin­ues to of­fer property in­vestors solid re­turns on in­vest­ment and good value com­pared to other southern sub­urbs, says Tina Malyon of Lew Gef­fen Sotheby’s In­ter­na­tional Realty.

“Prop­er­ties that are cor­rectly priced in ar­eas like Rose­bank and Ron­de­bosch are snapped up al­most im­me­di­ately,” Malyon says.”Th­ese sub­urbs were tra­di­tion­ally dom­i­nated by free­hold prop­er­ties but sec­tional ti­tle devel­op­ments have mush­roomed in re­cent years in re­sponse to the grow­ing de­mand for stu­dent ac­com­mo­da­tion. How­ever, in spite of the new devel­op­ments, we are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing stock short­ages in this sec­tor and sec­tional ti­tle units in the R1.5 mil­lion to R2m price band sell al­most im­me­di­ately when they do be­come avail­able.”

Malyon says that Rose­bank and Ron­de­bosch have man­aged to re­tain their char­ac­ter and charm while em­brac­ing the vi­brancy in­tro­duced by the grow­ing in­flux of stu­dents.

“Rose­bank is one of Cape Town’s most es­tab­lished sub­urbs with a very stable res­i­dent base, many of whom have lived in the area for over a decade.”

This is con­firmed by a re­cent Light­stone property re­port which re­veals that 34 per­cent of Rose­bank’s res­i­dent property own­ers have lived in the area for more than 11 years and 14 per­cent have resided in the sub­urb for be­tween eight and 10 years.

Malyon at­tributes this to sev­eral key fac­tors, in­clud­ing prox­im­ity to the city cen­tre as well as good lo­cal schools and the univer­sity, ex­cel­lent med­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties and re­tail of­fer­ings.

Home to the main UCT cam­pus, Ron­de­bosch is also bi­sected by the rail­way line with its younger res­i­dents lo­cated near the univer­sity. How­ever, be­ing a larger sub­urb com­pris­ing sev­eral ar­eas with dif­fer­ent property op­tions, Ron­de­bosch re­mains ex­tremely pop­u­lar with fam­i­lies.

Cit­ing Props­tats data, Lew Gef­fen, chair­man of Lew Gef­fen Sotheby’s In­ter­na­tional Realty says that property val­ues there are steadily in­creas­ing. “In 2014 the av­er­age sale price of a sec­tional ti­tle property in Ron­de­bosch was just over R1.5m, with fig­ures for 2015 to date re­flect­ing an in­crease of just over R150 000 tak­ing the me­dian price to R1.65m. Free­stand­ing prop­er­ties have also fared well with an av­er­age sale price of R3.87m in R2014, jump­ing to R4.4m just a year later.”

Gef­fen says that al­though Rose­bank has al­ways been a lit­tle more ac­ces­si­ble from a price per­spec­tive, in­creased de­mand and dearth in avail­able prop­er­ties have caused val­ues to spike over the past year with av­er­age free­stand­ing property prices in­creas­ing from just over R2.8m in 2014 to R3.95m to date in 2015.

And Rose­bank’s soughtafter dou­ble- storey Her­bert Baker build­ings, which typ­i­cally strad­dle plots of around 1 500m², can sell for as much as R7m if they be­come avail­able.

“Sec­tional ti­tle prop­er­ties have also fared well,” says Gef­fen, “with the me­dian sale price in­creas­ing from R1.08m in 2014 to R1.16m to date in 2015.”

SPA­CIOUS FAM­ILY HOME: This com­fort­able three-bed­room Ron­de­bosch home with a wood-burn­ing fire­place in the liv­ing room, and es­tab­lished gar­den and a pool, is for sale at R4.5 mil­lion.